In an era when so many young people seem to be cosseted and protected from anything harsh or dangerous, there are still good books to show them the darkness and complexity of real life. These three new titles are all emotionally and intellectually confronting, and none pulls any punches. In James Roy’s Ichabod Hart and the Lighthouse Mystery, convicts are deliberately mutilated to make them more efficient in the mines; in Peter Jean’s Stoker’s Bay, one character is flogged almost to death as a punishment for rape, and another is drowned with his hands bound; and in Jackie French’s Tom Appleby, Convict Boy, an otherwise light-hearted offering, there is a graphic hanging scene.

The most impressive of the novels is Ichabod Hart and the Lighthouse Mystery, with its skilful and entertaining mixture of colonial history, fantasy and science fiction, and with a crackling good mystery thrown in. It deals with technology and its grip on us all; and with greed and how it distorts the human character.